Prime ministers questions now follows an extremely familiar pattern.
Every week, Keir Starmer stands up and goes through as many of Boris Johnson’s most recent lies and failures as can be squeezed into the time allowed, and in response Boris Johnson blames him for not being “supportive” enough of the various lies and failures that have just been identified.
This week, we would learn that there is a government report that Johnson hasn’t read but is “aware of” that predicts more than 100,000 deaths from Covid-19 over the winter, unless several preventative measures are taken, one of which is getting the test, track and trace system working properly, which it currently does not.
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In response, Johnson, doing his very best Donald Trump tribute act, would state again that the system WOULD be “world-leading” and “world-beating”, which he previously said it would be when it was meant to launch two months ago but then didn’t. He would then blame Starmer for “knocking people’s confidence” in the test, track and trace system that doesn’t work, by doing his constitutionally prescribed job and pointing out that it doesn’t work.
You have to applaud, really. Johnson nods in easy lies all the time, but this was the Zlatan Ibrahimovic of lies – like a brilliant overhead kick from 40 yards.
In terms of per capita deaths, Johnson has overseen the worst coronavirus response of any country with the possible exception of Belgium, and here he was, standing at the despatch box, quite literally pointing the finger of blame at the guy who has the temerity to keep pointing out that he hasn’t done any of the things he said he was going to do.
Of course, one has to remember that there are millions of people out there who think Johnson is great, and that he is doing a great job. It would be hopelessly naive of anyone not to see that this stuff works.
Johnson has assembled around him a highly dedicated cadre of people who are entirely useless at absolutely everything except for lying, and the potency of their expertise should not be underestimated. £350m a week for the NHS. Turkey is joining the EU. There’s clearly no doubt that this newest tactic is polling well, so on it goes.
It’s a stunningly effective scam. The worse Boris Johnson is, the more tens of thousands of people needlessly die, the more Keir Starmer will have to criticise, and the more Johnson’s failings can be ascribed to Starmer’s refusal to “get behind” him.
Johnson’s other now standardised attack line is to accuse Keir Starmer of being a lawyer. If he claims to be supportive of any of the government’s actions, and then later points out that they’re not working, this apparently is because he has received “one brief one week and one the next”.
Last week, we would learn, he was supportive of the government’s economic package, this week he’s asking questions about it. This, apparently, is hypocrisy. Fortunately, the chamber is still subject to social distancing measures, so we were spared the spectacle of Johnson accusing Starmer, by virtue of being a former barrister, of having “more briefs than Calvin Klein”, and the more than 100 barristers on the Tory benches whooping with delight.
It’s utter, utter nonsense, and obviously he knows it, though it is thrilling to see where it might go next.
Last week, he said he was fully supportive of the government’s plan to go away for the weekend. Now he’s blaming me for crashing the car. It’s one brief one week another the next.
Of course, the real tragedy is that Johnson is right. Starmer is an Englishman after all. Getting behind something, even though it very clearly doesn’t work and is only going to lead to ruin, is now the patriotic duty of us all.
In fact the entire occasion contained an eerie de ja vu of another moment of recent English history. Namely, when the England football team had failed to defeat the mighty Algeria in the 2010 World Cup, and Wayne Rooney sulked off the pitch, turned to a TV camera and blamed the England fans for his own horrific performance.
We have all been painted into the same corner by Boris’s big brush of bullsh*t. No getting out now.
